XPost: ba.politics, dc.media, soc.penpals   
   XPost: alt.burningman   
   From: stayner@yahoo.com   
      
   Donors to Gregory R. Ball’s successful campaigns for the New   
   York State Legislature might have been surprised by where he   
   spent their money.   
      
   He financed excursions to Cancún and Acapulco, and a leisurely   
   road trip on his way back. He sprang for thousands of dollars in   
   bar and restaurant bills in Texas — and entry fees for an   
   extreme obstacle-course race called Tough Mudder.   
      
   The freewheeling spending by Mr. Ball, a Republican senator from   
   New York City’s northern suburbs, was only a sliver of the   
   questionable conduct turned up by investigators for the Moreland   
   Commission, a powerful anticorruption panel that Gov. Andrew M.   
   Cuomo created last year to clean up Albany.   
      
   But Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, abruptly shut the commission down as   
   part of a budget deal with the State Legislature in March.   
   Government watchdog groups were outraged. Federal prosecutors   
   began a criminal inquiry.   
      
   Their work has entailed examining the shutdown while picking up   
   where the commission had left off, including looking at Mr.   
   Ball’s spending, which he maintains was legitimate, some of it a   
   repayment of personal loans he had made to his campaign.   
      
   So far, people with knowledge of the matter say, prosecutors   
   have found that Sheldon Silver, the powerful Democratic speaker   
   of the State Assembly, failed to disclose some of the income he   
   earned in the private sector. While he has disclosed earnings   
   from a major personal-injury law firm for years, prosecutors   
   found other law-firm income that he did not detail as required.   
   A spokesman for Mr. Silver said that he had disclosed all of his   
   law-practice income, but declined to answer questions about its   
   source.   
      
   Much of what the Moreland Commission uncovered, however   
   troubling, will never wind up in a courtroom.   
      
   In Albany, some of the most questionable conduct by elected   
   officials has long been perfectly legal, safeguarded by the only   
   people who can outlaw it: the lawmakers themselves.   
      
   Before it was disbanded, the Moreland Commission had urged   
   elected officials to close loopholes, to toughen criminal   
   statutes, to increase disclosure requirements and to restrict   
   how campaign funds could be spent — so that beachfront vacations   
   in Mexico, among other things, would be off limits.   
      
   Now, eight months after its work was cut short, little in Albany   
   has changed.   
      
   ¦ Powerful politicians — including the governor himself —   
   continue to exploit a loophole in state law that allows   
   corporations to funnel huge donations to them in smaller gifts   
   that disguise the true sources of the money.   
      
   ¦ Lax personal financial disclosure laws, critics say, give   
   corrupt legislators a way to mask political payoffs under the   
   guise of part-time jobs. A 2011 reform presented as requiring   
   disclosure of some clients was so narrowly drawn as to be   
   meaningless, and another enacted this year allowed enough wiggle   
   room that lawmakers could well continue to avoid scrutiny.   
      
   ¦ The line between political donations and outright bribery   
   remains murky. Some politicians used their campaign treasuries   
   as piggy banks for personal expenses, the commission’s   
   investigators found, and bank records showed that lawmakers had   
   failed to report some donations and expenditures altogether. A   
   new, beefed-up Board of Elections enforcement unit has yet to   
   show its strength.   
      
   Lawmakers are negotiating with the governor to return to the   
   state capital for a special session in the coming days — to give   
   themselves a pay raise. In return, Mr. Cuomo, bruised by the   
   fallout from his closing of the commission, wants improvements   
   to ethics laws. A spokeswoman for the governor, Dani Lever,   
   said, “A pay raise would never be contemplated without the   
   inclusion of significant reforms.”   
      
   But any deal appears unlikely to include the kind of strictures   
   that good-government groups in New York have long sought.   
      
   Had it survived, the Moreland Commission — named for a 1907 law   
   and stocked with current and former prosecutors — appeared bent   
   on pushing for those kinds of reforms.   
      
   The commission’s unfinished business, a New York Times   
   examination found, centered largely on how politicians were   
   taking advantage of gaps in the law, and exploiting weaknesses   
   in its enforcement, to raise money for campaigns as well as to   
   enrich themselves personally.   
      
   And those gaps and weaknesses remain.   
      
   The Times’s examination included a review of hundreds of pages   
   of internal documents, emails and subpoenas; campaign-finance   
   records; and interviews with commissioners and staff members,   
   other state officials, defense lawyers and law enforcement   
   officials.   
      
   For Mr. Cuomo, the commission has been a source of considerable   
   controversy and the subject of damaging reports by news   
   organizations including The Times. He set it up with public   
   promises that it would be independent. But as The Times reported   
   in July, Mr. Cuomo repeatedly meddled in the commission’s work   
   when it sought to scrutinize groups with ties to him.   
      
   In March, when Mr. Cuomo disbanded the commission in exchange   
   for new ethics laws, those statutes failed to address the fund-   
   raising practices that most troubled the panel’s members and   
   seemed unlikely to make a dent in what they called Albany’s “pay-   
   to-play political culture driven by large checks.”   
      
   Mr. Cuomo easily won a second term in November. To pave the way   
   for that victory, he raised about $47 million — much of it   
   through the same kinds of enormous donations that the commission   
   was building a case to outlaw.   
      
   ‘LLC Loophole’   
      
   For powerful politicians and the big businesses they court,   
   getting around New York’s campaign donation limits is easy.   
      
   Emails that investigators unearthed between a fund-raiser for   
   Mr. Cuomo and an executive at Glenwood Management, a developer   
   of Manhattan rental apartments, show how it is done.   
      
   Corporations like Glenwood are permitted to make a total of no   
   more than $5,000 a year in political donations. But New York’s   
   “LLC loophole” treats limited-liability companies as people, not   
   corporations, allowing them to donate up to $60,800 to a   
   statewide candidate per election cycle. So when Mr. Cuomo’s   
   campaign wanted to nail down what became a $1 million multiyear   
   commitment — and suggested “breaking it down into biannual   
   installments” — the company complied by dividing each payment   
   into permissible amounts and contributing those through some of   
   the many opaquely named limited-liability companies it   
   controlled, like Tribeca North End LLC.   
      
   Continue reading the main story   
   The Cuomo campaign reminded the firm later of 10 Glenwood-   
   controlled LLCs that had already made donations.   
      
   A lawyer for Glenwood, Alan Levine, declined to comment. Ms.   
   Lever, the governor’s spokeswoman, said his campaign “operates   
   within the bounds of the current campaign-finance system.”   
      
   The torrent of money that flows into New York politics was a   
   central concern for the Moreland Commission, and the LLC   
   loophole was one of the most glaring weaknesses it saw in the   
   campaign-finance system. Investigators subpoenaed several   
      
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